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Bing exceeds expectations for search market share

Admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:30:02 +0000

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine service is reported to have acquired over twelve percent of the search engine market in just one year, according to a report by independent researcher ComScore. The site’s success shows promise for future market coverage, although in relation to other search engine sites such as Yahoo and Google, there is still a long way to go before it becomes a serious competitor.

Google currently owns a 62.6% market share of search users, and Yahoo has 18.9%. Microsoft has stated that they are prepared to leverage as much financial strength as it takes to be a force in the search engine market. Industry experts doubt that Microsoft will ever have the capability to eclipse sites such as Google, which are firmly entrenched in the market. People now refer to searching online as ‘Googling’, showing just how firm a foothold the company has within internet culture.

Bing mobile has attracted 23 million users, and since its launch in June last year it has slowly crept up the popularity sweepstakes through its unique approach to searching. Rather than being billed simply as a search engine, Bing focuses upon popular subjects in an attempt to corner the market as the ‘consumer friendly’ search site. News, travel, weather and entertainment form most of Bing’s target search areas.

Microsoft has stated that it is committed to enhancing mobile use, which will stand to enhance their share of the search engine market. By focussing upon their mobile strategy and being responsive to mobile browsing needs, they hope to provide a simple and user-friendly method of searching for information online with the minimum of type strokes.

Erik Jorgensen, Microsoft’s mobile vice-president has commented: “It’s clearly an area where growth in search is occurring and in terms of strategic importance, it is near the top for Microsoft. Location is key – type less and do more. People drive themselves crazy trying to type on these mobile devices so the more we can understand what they are trying to do and provide an easier way to get to it through visual, voice and touch is a key insight into how mobile search is going to evolve.”

Google Chrome browser gets World Cup extension

Andre — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:08:41 +0000

Search engine giants Google and football federation Fifa have collaborated on a range of tools that will make it much easier to find the latest World Cup news and scores directly from Google’s Chrome browser.
The brand new Fifa extension provides a live feed of results, news and match statistics, and users will be able to personalise the plug-in to display goal alerts for their favourite team.

Google has also optimised its search service to deliver the specific information that people want, no matter how cryptic the search terms. For instance, Googling “World Cup”, “World Cup Spain”, or even “World Cup Group G” will pull up player profiles, live scores and player profiles for any team affiliated with your search.

There is also a Fifa gadget for Google’s personalised iGoogle home page, which streams team news, player information and matches directly to users. Meanwhile, fans that are travelling to South Africa to watch games will be able to use Google Maps to find out about host cities, and even to plan their route using Street View photography.

Google’s bitter rivals Microsoft have also created a similar service for World Cup fans on their Bing search engine. Bing’s social search page has a list of popular trending topics, as well as public messages from Facebook and Twitter.

Apple allow Bing as a search option for iPhone

Andre — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Among the many announcements made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ at WWDC in San Francisco yesterday was the interesting fact that Microsoft’s Bing will become a search option on the iPhone. Microsoft is also expected to announce later in the week that Bing will also become an option on both the Windows and MAC versions of Apple’s Safari browser.

Bing joins fellow Apple rivals Yahoo as a search option on the iPhone, but Google will remain the default search engine. Nevertheless this is a big step for Microsoft in their attempts to catch up with Google.

“Apple today announced that Bing will be included as one of the search engine choices within Safari on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and within the Safari browser on the Mac and PC,” Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post. “Needless to say, we are excited that Bing will be included as an option in Safari because it will make it easier for you to search and get the benefits of Bing.”

Mehdi also revealed that Microsoft has been working with Apple “over the last couple of months” to deliver Bing for Safari which will include some HTML5 work for the iPhone version.

“In addition, we are continuing to improve our existing Bing mobile application for iPhone which makes it easy to search, map, and find commerce and movie times,” Mehdi said. “We will have a new release with even more great features very soon. For those of you that have not already tried it, you can find it in the App Store today.”

Yahoo! and Bing gain more ground on Google

Andre — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:00:21 +0000

New figures released by ComScore have revealed that Yahoo! and Bing have had a good month of April as both companies have gained some ground on Google in the search engine war.

Yahoo’s market share increased by nearly 1 percent whilst Microsoft’s Bing continued to rise for the 11th month in succession.

There has been an ongoing debate amongst market analysts as to whether the rise shows the effects of the recent search deal between the two former rivals is now being felt or whether Yahoo’s gain was a result of the new features they have released for their news service.

According to tech analysts AFP, the new feature of Yahoo! News, which registers each view of a photo slideshow as a separate search query is the main reason behind the turnaround for Yahoo! as their share has rise by 0.8 percent in the last month, meaning that they now account for 17.7 percent of the lucrative search market.

ComScore, however, confirmed that these clicks are still valid as the Yahoo! News feature meets its “established criticism for counting search queries”.

“Both Yahoo! sites and Microsoft sites have experienced gains due in part to the introduction of new site navigation experiences that tie content and related search results together within several channels,” the internet research company explained.

“These features provide search results to users as they navigate through topical content.”

Google are still leading the pack of course as they hold a 64.4 percent share of the market.

But Google will be worried about the five year search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! as they have been losing ground against their closest rivals at an accelerating rate, dropping by 0.7 percent last month and 0.4 percent in February.

Bing gains a market share as Yahoo continues to flounder

James Oliver — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:08:38 +0000

It would appear that Microsoft’s relentless marketing of its Bing search engine is beginning to pay off at the expense of Yahoo. The last couple of months have seen Microsoft release a number of advertisements in the UK as well as a lucrative sponsorship deal with The Simpsons on Channel 4 in the hope of increasing the number of users flocking to Bing.

Microsoft stated that although they were no where near the market share that Google harboured their plan was to at least catch up to Yahoo who sit second place in the short list of search engine market leaders. Slowly but surely they appear to be delivering on their mission statement as Bing has managed to gain an improved market share in the last few months.

According to web analytics company ComScore, the search engine has reported a positive improvement in their total search share in February 2010. Bing’s share of the market has increased from 11.3% in January to 11.5% in February, although this is in actual fact their slowest growth since September 2009.

The Bing effect seems to have had a negative impact on Yahoo who continue to be in proverbial freefall as they have dropped from 17% in January to a market share of 16.8% in February.

So while it looks like Microsoft’s Bing will continue to make headway in its battle for second spot with Yahoo, the market leaders Google continue to coast along in relative comfort as they are still left with a healthy 65.5% share of the market. This is an improvement from January for them albeit by 0.1%, it would seem that every fraction counts as the search engine market looks set for a competitive 2010.

Microsoft get aggressive in marketing of Bing

Jenny Sanderson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:37:57 +0000

You have to admire the sheer tenacity of Microsoft. It is well noted that Google completely dominate the search engine market with a massive 86% of the global market, whilst Microsoft’s Bing has a meagre 3.4% share. Despite this, Microsoft have embarked on an aggressive advertising campaign in the UK in the hope of at least stealing second place from Yahoo.

In a statement of intent Microsoft have moved to sponsor The Simpsons on Channel 4 in the UK. This comes as a part of their multi million pound campaign to promote Bing across the nation. The Simpsons is one of the most popular prime time television shows in the UK receiving a great deal of the target age viewers that Microsoft have identified as being most important to their success.

The sponsorship will run for 3 months as of this week and can be seen before, during and after the 6pm show on Channel 4. The advert has been especially created for the show as it presents a family happily using the Bing search engine.

This comes soon after the first television advert broadcast by Bing this week during the Manchester United VS AC Milan Champions League match on Wednesday. The ad campaign labelled ‘Bing and Decide’ conveys that whilst other search engines may give you an information overload, Bing functions more as a decision engine offering more of a categorized search.

Time will tell as to whether the millions spent by Microsoft on this campaign are worth while, they have set their sights on second place for now but ‘runner-up’ has never been a tagline the company has associated itself with so I am sure that Bing will have Google in its sights soon enough.

The thinking behind ‘Bing’

Matt Thomas — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:48:03 +0000

You’ll probably know by now, whether from this blog or one of the hundreds of others that have been covering this, that Microsoft have named their new search engine ‘bing.’ Now, to some that name may seem like just a random title picked out of the air at great expense by a marketing firm, however, to Mr. Steven Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft it is a clever marketing ploy rich in potential to become a household name.

Not convinced? Well, allow me to make his case. Bing is memorable one word brand that has strong connotations of that eureka moment when you find a solution to your problem – also the strip club in the Sopranos, but we’ll leave that aside for now. It also, and this is the important bit, has the potential to be used as a verb easily, i.e. ‘Why don’t you bing it,’ ‘I binged it and this came up.’

There’s also the plus that such a word cannot be easily misunderstood as it is essentially meaningless. As Steve Ballmer says, “It works globally, and doesn’t have negative, unusual connotations.”

Fair enough I guess but not everyone agrees, some experts are criticising the use of a word with such little meaning and pointing out that they will have to spend a lot of money creating any sort of brand association.

Kumo’s name to Change

James Oliver — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:48:32 +0000

For several months Microsoft has been testing a new search engine, the working title up till now has been Kumo, though Microsoft were always keen to stress that this was not a final name. According to reports the name is indeed set to change ahead of the rumoured $80 – 100 million dollar advertising push that Microsoft has planned for the new venture.

According to Advertising Age the new name, or in fact, the first official name, is set to be ‘Bing.’ No explanation has been offered as of yet for the enigmatic title and Microsoft are declining to comment for the time being, though it is thought that more will be revealed this week when Steve Ballmer speaks at the ‘All Things Digital’ conference in California.

The anticipated advertising spend has also raised eyebrows around silicon valley. The amount is thought to be very high, even for Microsoft, especially when compared to the barely 25 million dollars that Google spent on all its advertising last year. However, those expecting a repeat of the confrontational advertising approach that the company has been taking with Apple look set to be disappointed, Google will apparently not be mentioned by name.